Michigan Passes Right to Work Law

Discussion in 'Politics' started by madanthonywayne, Dec 12, 2012.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    So "right to work" government meddling, official government interference with the negotiations between management of capital and management of labor, is the good kind of government interference with free markets. So say our local free market advocates.

    How do we tell the good kind from the bad kind, in advance? Apparently, simple: if it benefits capital and penalizes labor, it's the good kind.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    I was chatting with my father about this the other day. He maintains UAW made our lives much better. But, here's the thing - it made HIS life much better. He always craps on about how much GM was making in profits and how much management took in pay and bonuses. I actually worked in management (not really but I was salaried). It is true that the manager of the plant I worked at (14,000) employees did get paid a lot of money. This was AC Rochester so they made a lot of components like filters and plugs. What no one mentions is that the last three directors died of heart attacks before the age of 55. Don't get me wrong, lots of line workers died of cancer. It's a tough business. Workers always frame it from their POV and manage from theirs.

    I'd say of the two, the managers worked harder. It was pretty common to see line workers stoned, although over time UAW finally started giving in a little and firing these dead beats. Funny enough, in the end, UAW was almost as hard on the line workers as management. You hear line workers complaining about UAW more than management! Funny enough the UAW bosses had become a type of management - they hated the line worker probably more than the actual management as it ultimately fell on their shoulders to keep their workers in line. also, I think they could see the way things were going. The milk cow was about dead even when I worked there.

    Not that it matters - it's gone. There are little if any jobs at GM in MI. If you do get a job, you'll be put on a contract separate from your fathers. Whereas they were on 80k thirty years ago, you'll be lucky t get $10 - 15 an hour. Americans just don't want to pay a small mortgage for a crappy assembled in the USA car.

    My father retired at 49 and he probably makes more on his retirement than most people here will make in their actual jobs. His response to me complaining about how his kids (my brothers) lack the opportunities he had and he said Fuck Em, I gave you boys every opportunity in the world. Which is a total lie, he didn't do jack shit. He paid my mother $40 a week and that seems to have been enough to clear his conscious. My one brother sells Mary Jane and the other does odd end jobs. Both live in crack-haven. Both will be lucky not to be shot.


    I personally think the root problem lies in the very currency we use as this level of abstraction (and money is already abstract enough) is so far removed as to almost make it nearly impossible to function in a beneficial manner. The next big problem is regulations, which are more about rent seeking than actually helping anyone. The last problem is the distortion of democracy. We have major structural problems as a result of democracy. I have come to believe that without a properly functioning currency democracy can not function properly. The two are reflections of one another. Your "'money" is your vote for what YOU want and unlike voting for a politician you express this vote in varying degrees. I also have no hope we'll be able to fix the problems we face instead we'll make problems much worse. It's an inevitability of the system. Much like the "People's Republic" the Civil "Servants" will also see the same problems inherent in democracy - their solution will not be to make us freer via competing currencies but instead to reduce our civil liberties.

    It will be interesting to see just how much liberal conservatism (yes before demagoguery separating them those two terms went together like hand in glove) remains a part of our culture and social consciousness.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    My new car was assembled in Michigan, and it isn't crappy.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    How is the union supposed to negotiate on behalf of people who don't contribute to the union?
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Lots of good, reliable, and popular Toyotas and Hondas are assembled in the US. The executive work is done elsewhere, seems to be the key.

    Japanese upper level executives are paid much less than US ones, despite being manifestly better at their jobs and working for more profitable corporations. And Japanese line workers not only make comparatively more money (compared with the executives), but enjoy decent access to health care, limited working hours, job security, and other perks supposedly symptoms of union featherbedding and malign influence.

    Another in the long list of blatantly false assertions from this source. If an ideology is really that dependent on such ridiculous and easily corrected claims and fantasies, it's time for a new ideology. Something reality based.
     
  9. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    Well that exactly what they are going to have to do to function under these anti-union laws.
     
  10. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    I found the Chevy I was driving to be pretty sub-par. I felt like I was sitting in a toy car. I have the same feeling in Toyota's. Honda on the other hand actually feels like a car even though they're pretty cheap cars.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    I drive a 2013 Ford Focus ST.
     
  12. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,938
    My wife drives a 2001 Subaru Legacy GT that was assembled in Nevada IIRC... it's a beautiful little car, great for the snow! My 1990 Pathfinder is a goddamned tanklike beast which no weather phenomenon has YET to stop... but the 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo I'm stuck driving now (pathy has Rust issues due to 20+ years in the PA salt) is chincy, half the electronics don't work (including the rear wiper and ignition switch) and sucks in anything but dry weather...
     
  13. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Liberal conservatism

    I'm not sure what you're getting at? Liberal Conservatism seems to be contemporaneous with the young USA. Am I a liberal conservative? No, I have little respect of either public or religious authority. Never really had TTYTT. Private institutions OTOH, I have found to be immensely valuable.


    This 'new ideology' you propose: Should it be based on free voluntarism or violent force and coercion?
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    The Inevitable Punch Line

    Nope. The bill was never—never—about job creation.

    At least, according to the guy who signed it into law:

    Gov. Rick Snyder in a speech to the Michigan Press Association dismissed concerns about a deflating effect of right to work on labor wages, focusing instead on his effort to play matchmaker between "talent" supply and demand.

    Two of the four questions Snyder took after speaking Friday, Jan. 25, at a luncheon in Amway Grand Plaza Hotel dealt with the controversial bill that the Republican-led state Legislature passed in lame-duck session last month. The gist of his responses: Michiganders aren't going to be working union jobs anyway, so stop making right to work a divisive, political issue.

    "Over 90 percent of the jobs that you're looking at aren't going to be in a situation where right to work is even relevant," Snyder said in the hotel's Ambassador Ballroom. "Let's keep in mind what the economy is really about. Why not embrace the great things going on and be more positive?

    "Let's not live in the Michigan of the past where we fought. Let's learn from it and recognize that we're in the Michigan of 2013, but let's be planning for the Michigan of 2025 and a great place for all of these young people."


    (Vande Bunte)

    Political revenge. That's all it was.

    Of course, that was clear from the outset to anyone who isn't a willful abettor of conservatism.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Vande Bunte, Matt. "Gov. Rick Snyder in Grand Rapids: Right to work irrelevant to Michigan's future economy". MLive. January 25, 2013. MLive.com. January 28, 2013. http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/01/gov_rick_snyder_in_grand_rapid.html
     
  15. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    they don't. And they did a crappy job at it anyways. They pretended to fight for things that the law already gave us. And making $25 an hr to put a license plate bracket on a car, well those days are long gone. Rightly so. I know I don't want to pay all that money for a car just so that person gets paid that.

    Around here businesses close and re-open 2 yrs later. Its how they legally bust the union
     

Share This Page